Heritage fires back at Obama

From NBC's Mark MurrayIn his interview with NBC's Matt Lauer on "TODAY," President Obama used the conservative Heritage Foundation as an example of how the health-care law has incorporated GOP and conservative ideas.

[W]hen you actually look at the bill itself, it incorporates all sorts of Republican ideas. I mean, a lot of commentators have said, you know, this is sort of similar to the bill that Mitt Romney, the Republican governor and now presidential candidate, passed in Massachusetts. A lot of the ideas in terms of the exchange, just being able to pool and improve the purchasing power of individuals in the insurance market. That originated from the Heritage Foundation.

Not surprisingly, Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner has fired back at the president in a blog post. While he doesn't exactly refute that the health exchanges are based on the conservative think tank's market-based ideas, Feulner contends that they go too far in regulations and federal standards.

But the President knows full well—or he ought to learn before he speaks—that the exchanges we and most others support are very different from those in his package. True exchanges are simply a market mechanism to enable families to choose their health insurance. President Obama's exchanges, by contrast, are a vehicle to introduce sweeping regulation and federal standardization on health insurance.